This one's may favourite type of fabric - silk velvet - in fact silk with a rayon pile: the rayon takes the dye beautifully. Real luxury.
This one's silk habotai - not my favourite fabric for working with as it's too fine, though lightweight iron-on vilene helps to give it enough body and fray-resistance to work with. Same technique as the first one - colurs are blue 2R, yellow 4G and a tiny amount of red 5B for the purple.The others I did were less successful, but may still have their uses:
This one's calico (muslin for transatlantic friends) dyed with left-overs from the velvet: soda had already been added to dye the velvet and by the time I got round to this one I think the dyes had already begun to fix on the water, hence the faded look.
This is cotton poplin, but again left-over dyes produced the same faded look, and I fiddled too much so the colours merged rather than producing stripes. But still very usable.
They were all done as part of Marjie McWilliams' Shibori class at Quilt University, which I highly recommend. I haven't gone into detail about the techniques because they are Marjie's not mine - you'll have to take the class to find out. Yes I know I've dyed fabric professionally but I can still learn from other dyers, and I haven't got much experience of Shibori techniques! And anyway the class is FUN! as well as being highly informative.
And this is Django being his usual helpful self, supervising the photography!
BIXY UPDATE!!!
He seems to have acquire a number of fans over the last few weeks so here's an update on progress. Blood tests absolutely clear - YAY! - seems to have been a one-off episode. Not so good - he discovered once again where I was feeding the other cats, managed to get there, and when I found him he was muching his way along three breakfasts (in addition to his own): not surprisingly, he has gained weight. Needless to say, all moggy mealtimes in this house are now strictly supervised.
5 comments:
YEAH BIXY !
White cats rule !I have a 20 lb chat noir on my lap right now. I still miss my white beauty after 3 years !
Cheers !
Thanks Marie - Bixy is now almost as small as your cat! I once had a (rather tiny) all black cat and she was gorgeous, so I'm sure yours is too, as is Bixy!
Love your dying experiments, especially the silk velvet! I also have a 10k snoopervisor in my studio. He is large and ginger.
Thanks for the comment on my little embroidery. The brilliant top velvet still takes my breath away! What are you up to these days?
That top bit is fabulous, Sandra. I sympathise with the cat thing...Advo (oldest of four) is lovingly known as Fattie, though the vet did say last time he went that given that he's a big cat, he wasn't too bad (not sure what that means in real terms...), and could come off the diatetic food (which is double the price of the normal stuff, and all the cats adore it). We feed him Iams light, which the other three also adore, and Advo is to be found grazing the other bowls now and again, whilst the others steal his grub unashamedly... I think what I'm trying to say here is that there's no right answer.
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